Covid quarantine showed us that extremes should be avoided. You can get quality time without destroying your career.

Yes, spend time with your kids, but try not to smother them, and ensure they have a diverse set of interactions with a range of people.

this doesn't applies for 2 month old babies. You are their entire world.

I agree. The commenter seemed to be targeting older kids though.

It's started off that "take a couple of months parental leave", which I agree. Then it talked about "kids shows", that's years later.

As a man, I agree, but I’ll add take some time to be the sole caretaker. I took some time off with my wife and then some more time off when my wife went back to work. It was a totally different experience and I bonded a lot with my daughter. When mom’s around, it’s too easy to say “oh, she’s hungry, here.” You end up missing all these small moments to learn about your kid.

I think different things work for different people. But me; I agree with you. I have been around a lot for my kids and the idea of that not having been the case makes me feel hollow and weird.

Agreed, I took off 3 months when our second was born, then 3 months part time. Looking back, now in my late 50s, I realize work life is so long and toddlerhood so short. If I could go back I'd try to take a leave of absence for maybe a year.

All of this is of course is luxurious thinking for people with wealth and skills that stay in demand.

Just as important, they won't get them back either. If they live to be an average age of 80 or so, the time spent as an infant thru the end of (small) childhood in a state of constant neural growth, novelty of discovery and wonder impossible to reproduce at any later time, is less than one 10th of their life.

Very true, up till about age 12 or so.

At that point, kids start yearning to build their own identities. At least some of the time. They want to make their own friends; find their own obsessions and solve (or create) their own problems. They still check in with parents a lot. The rubber band of independence stretches and snaps, again and again.

You realize that no one is a perfect parent, because the concept of perfection collapses on itself. Part of the way that kids master independence is to be annoyed at their parents -- enough so that they walk home instead of waiting for the ride. If we're too good at parenting, the chaos and casual cruelty of the outside world becomes unbearable and they never get the hang of running their own lives.

I don't have kids of my own, but I have many younger cousins. I've noticed that by age 9-10 a lot of the charm was gone and their personalities were dominated by pop culture. Some re-emerge as normal in their mid-late teens or early 20s.

Basically the years they’re jettisoned out of childhood but aren’t welcome in adulthood so they’re figuring things out

That's a good way of phrasing at it, but unfortunately some young people seem to stay there for a very long time.

Fully agree. At around that age they increasingly don't want your undivided attention, except when they do. Its important to give them space to develop their own identity, with the reassurance that they have safety and support. And that if they need that, you'll be there and fully engaged.